Happily Never After: Dan and Nancy

First of all, Heidi A+++++ FIVE STARS. On a SCALE 1-10, 10 being the best, you get 100. I loved this true crime story. Not the crime, obviously, but the way you dropped us into the story. So as you were narrating, I felt like I was in an open air tour bus, with a group of crime story writers and we were in the story. I live outside of Portland, a newbie, originally from Carmel, Ca., and as i listened to your podcast, i felt like bragging to my author friends back home, that “this happened only a town over ! And I’ve driven by where it happened!!” It really is so surreal. You and everyone involved in assembling this story for your podcast, did a fabulous job! In fact I sent your story and podcast to a friend of mine, also an author, whose husband is a famous child actor. They love stories like this. And I sent to many of my friends on Facebook..many best selling authors … I know they will follow you, like I’m doing. Thank you for such a well done story. I look forward for your next one ! By the way, I found an excerpt from Nancy’s , “From My Navel to my Knees” and oh my gosh, it was published in 2012 but it was made for TODAY…all about women’s rights ! Have a wonderful week! Leslie Buck

I’m really not sure what crawled up the naysayers butts, but they weren’t listening to the same show we were…This podcast riveted my entire family. Great job, and the narrator should get her own podcast. Excellent, through and through. Music, sound effects, story, all binge-worthy. I’d love to see Happily Never After become a series, with Heidi as narrator, and the editorial team staying with the interesting story telling techniques. Everyone’s a hidden critic these days, and bullies get their jollies being snarky and mean, stalking and creeping behind a fake persona. Disgusting and misleading. Highly recommend.

Excellent narrator. The story is wild and I couldn’t stop listening. Great reporting

Tragic story but well told. I loved the narrator and her voice. Binged the whole thing one afternoon while painting. Highly recommend!

The narrator is so annoying (gives her opinions very unnecessarily), and as another individual commented, you need to listen to this on 1.25 or 1.5 speed in order to pay attention. The production does not fit the crime at hand. The crime itself is very intriguing, but we’re really only presented one side. It would have been better had we heard Nancy’s side of the story. But regardless, the narration and production really brings down the value of the plot.

A deep lack of self-awareness here. For as much as Heidi loves to suggest that Nancy is a hack, she has somehow assembled an even hackier podcast. It’s shockingly tone deaf, and she can’t hide her giddiness at being handed such an ironic story (the narration sounds like what I imagine an audio book for a romance novel would sound like, which, if purposeful, is astoundingly gross, and, if not, is astoundingly myopic). Other than pointing at that irony, over and over, she has absolutely nothing to say. In the final episode, she claims that the reporters felt a responsibility to tell this story to give Dan a voice, to paint a full picture of the man. Well, they don’t. At all. And to make that claim without actually dedicating any meaningful time to it is pretty unforgivable. Ultimately, it’s self-aggrandizing, self-congratulatory, solipsist schlock. As far as it’s artistic and journalist merit, it’s all the things it accuses Nancy of being.